Friday, 31 August 2012

It's my BLOGDAY! It has been a wonderful year of blogging, did my first nervous post on Wednesday 31st August 2011. A HUMUNGOUS thank you to my loyal followers and curious visitors, I am so grateful that you take the time to check out my ramblings and for your comments and encouragement. I had planned on a Giveaway for today but am busy on new prints and so will do a blogday giveaway some time next week for one of them.

Wednesday, 29 August 2012

I need to take the LOTTO today!!! Am beside myself with excitement! Rhenda iKHAYA and my FROZEN CHARLOTTE Pick Up Sticks Necklace is the HOUSE & LEISURE Item of the Day. Thank you so much Candice xxxxxxx.

Tuesday, 28 August 2012

Am working on a wonderful project, will do a post later once the piece in finished and presented and printed. This is a sneak peek at my homemade factory style assembly line. Dip. Tap. Hang. Dip. Tap. Hang. Altogether now Dip. Tap. Hang.

Monday, 27 August 2012

Take a little wander over to BEHANCE and have a leisurely trawl through Logoland - THE CURATORS showcase. These are the identities that my very clever typographer genius husband Scott Robertson and I create during our day(and night) job. Scott crafts very beautiful letter forms, I make the stories and the pictures, together we make people happy. I am not biased ......

Friday, 24 August 2012

Two posts in one day! I had to show you these Proteas. They are even brighter and fuzzier in real life, can you cope! When I saw them at the flower sellers I thought their leaves were cut using pinking shears and the flowers were some kind of flocking. I have NEVER seen such amazing flowers. They even have a small touch of brilliant orange in amongst the petals at the base of the flower. They are real, really real I tell you! AMAZEBALLS!!!!

Oooh finally! I have my mitts on a jet black glass flower frog. Thank you ECLECTIC, I am so delighted. It is matt black but when you hold it to the light it is actually the deepest shade of purple wine. It has 4 1/2 MADE IN ENGLAND PATENT 7830/1910 embossed on the bottom. I love the weight of flower frogs and their strange forms which could be seed pod botanical or part of a machine.

Thursday, 23 August 2012

Wednesday, 22 August 2012

Swan has this delightful book Another Night Before Christmas that we both love to pieces. We bought it on sale at Exclusives and I have always wondered how on earth it ended up on sale because it is the loveliest tale with my most favourite illustrations. Swan has been sick so she has watched a brain crisping amount of telly, keeping her company I noticed a program which had remarkably familiar characters. MOUK!!!! An animated TV series about the adventures of Mouk and Chavapa, adapted from the illustrations of MARC BOUTAVANT. I have the biggest artist envy ever - the colour, the texture and the detail, plus the kawaii'est creatures this side of Sanrio. This is SO stocked in my dream shop!

Tuesday, 21 August 2012

This morning's post is one of those weird ones where I go on a long ambling rambling Google journey and end up somewhere unexpected but beautiful and relevant to my original thought but different. I am on the third book of MARY STEWART'S Merlin trilogy, it was first released in 1973 and I can't imagine how I have missed it up until now as I have read practically every Arthurian Cycle story ever written. Anyway I wanted to do a post on a contemporary Guinevere fashion shoot and came upon instead the amazing GUINEVERE VAN SEENUS, here she is by TIM WALKER for Vogue Italia, March 2011.

Monday, 20 August 2012

Hasten along hastily to ITSWHATIMINTO and have a look at the wonderful shoot TYRONE BRADLEY did of IKHAYA Rhenda and Nev's beautiful home and workshop. Awesome style, colour palette, furniture and collectables.

Friday, 17 August 2012

These happy nodding wonders are some of my third generation nasturtiums. I love looking out at our back garden from the kitchen and seeing their round leaves bobbing in the wind like land bound water lilies. Nasturtium Topaeolum majus contain a natural antibiotic that is kind on the tummy flora, they are super peppery but you can chew a leaf to fix a sore throat or add to salads or on a sandwich (the flowers are edible too). We have a longstanding joke with our GP who asks if I have had my nasturtium leaf when I go for a consult. My mother swears by them and I used to grimace and complain as a child because they are quite spicy, now I love them for the memories they bring.

Thursday, 16 August 2012

THE PORCH HOUSE from LAKE/FLATO ARCHITECTS is a beautiful example of sustainable home design. Factory built modules using healthy building materials. Highly efficient and gorgeous, I'll have me one please and thank you!

Wednesday, 15 August 2012

Because I am a responsible tax paying member of society this lovely clay has to stay in this bag for at least another week while I do my admin. It is taunting me! Also the choice between making something and counting something is like torture. Art versus maths. I know there is a yin and yang to functioning as an adult but I do wish patrons like the Medici's still existed along with their scribes.

Tuesday, 14 August 2012

I am a fan of eccentric women, particularly in the world of art and fashion. They live life big and to their own tune. They are not afraid to stray from the path expected of them and they could fill tomes with the story of their colourful lives. I don't think the way is easy but they forge ahead all the same with an inbuilt sense that what they are doing is right. YAYOI KUSAMA is a doyenne of pattern and repetition. She was huge in the avante garde art scene of 1970's New York. Her work is primarily conceptual installation and she raised the highest figure for an artwork sold at Christie's for a living female artist. At 83 she continues to rock out! New geometry long before new geometry.

Monday, 13 August 2012

The Messy Studio outside is in dire need of renovation, I mean D.I.R.E. We inherited horrendous drainage issues when we bought our house which has meant that the Messy Studio floods to the knees with any rain over a gentle misting. This is all fine and dandy if I am using it to spray paint but we can't store anything which makes it a wasted space. It is a small space but I have big visions for it, visions way beyond my budget and the actual square meterage but hey that's never stopped me before! So here is the next installment in my home maintenance vision quest. Messy Studio gets MADE!

Once I have created a worm hole to expand the size of the interior, the roof has to be fixed, so I plan on removing the ceiling and painting the lovely new exposed rafters white. Walls will be white too, stripped brick would be even better but the space really is teeny and needs light to grow.

A lovely cement floor, this is the only part of the reno that actually is in the realm of possibility as the floor is already bare concrete, just needs a scrub and a screed.

A cement basin or two would be splendid, absolutely vital in the messy studio for paint brushes and clay sludgy stuff.

How about a mezzanine, now this is probably a more realistic representation of the space before any manipulation of time and matter. It's good to dream on Monday's!

Friday, 10 August 2012

MINT is having a sale today, make sure you don't miss out on some of the splendid furniture, lighting, mirrors, kitchenalia and mid century collectables. You'll have to have quick typing fingers! Ready Steady Go!